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Elections are intended to provide each voter an equal vote on an issue. In fact, providing such an equal vote is fundamental to a fair election. Important benefits of fair elections are increased voter confidence and sense of enfranchisement in society and in government. In order to realize these benefits, voters must have confidence that the election system faithfully and completely provides the intended equality of each vote cast.
Election systems requiring public voting and tabulation, such as traditional viva voce votes and all votes in the U.S. Congress, give voters the ability to completely verify that the election system provides the intended equality of each vote cast on an issue. These election systems, however, do not provide the level of voter privacy required in modern elections.
As a result of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, however, many voters have lost confidence in the ability of the U.S. election system to faithfully and completely provide the intended equality of each vote cast. The U.S. election system provided results with an accuracy level that will never be known and may never be completely accepted as accurate.
The controversy revealed an election system composed of non-standard and unreliable election methods, machinery, and human judgement. This was most obviously illustrated as election officials tried several times to manually recount millions of anonymous votes in what proved to be a failed attempt to validate the election results. The startling lack of reliability in the methods and mechanics of the U.S. election system and the inability to verify the voting results have caused many voters to lose confidence in the system, and may be disinclined to vote in future elections.
The primary cause of the above problems is related to the manner of secret voting that is employed in such elections. All election systems that require secret voting and tabulation tend to compromise the voters"" ability to completely verify that the election system provides the equality of each vote cast on an issue. In these secret voting systems, the voters only have the ability to verify the equality of each vote if they are able to personally observe each step in the election system including the casting, storage, transportation, handling, recording, and tabulating of the votes.
Another potential problem caused by the currently-employed secret voting systems is a lack of homogeneity among voting systems used in the same election. Different physical embodiments of such systems are known to vary in their ability to approach faithful and complete provision of equality of each vote. Complete homogeneity of systems would require that each voter use the same physical embodiment of the secret voting system to assure the same degree of uncertainty in the equality of each vote.
Even if no problems were experienced in the taking of the vote, the tabulation of all votes cast in a national election is also a source of human error. Secret voting systems currently have no way of regressively assuring the quality of the vote. Given the enormous benefits to be gained by increasing voter confidence in elections and given the fundamental responsibility of governments to ensure the equal protection of each vote in an election, there exists a crucial unmet need for an election system that provides voters with the ability to vote and then to verify that the election system faithfully and completely provides the intended equality of each vote cast.
What is needed, then, is an election system that ensures that all voters have the ability to vote in a system that not only enables them to vote, but also allows them to privately verify that their votes were properly counted at the time of voting, properly added to the public record after the polling times expire, and properly tabulated from such a verified public record.
The present invention provides a method and system that standardizes and improves the task of ensuring an accurate vote reception and count. The major components of the method involve providing ballots to a group of voters; recording votes from the group of voters; publishing the votes from the group; validating the published votes on a per-voter basis; tabulating the votes validated; and certifying that the tabulated votes were accurately counted.
Systems are also taught herein for accomplishing these components in several different ways, namely: through the use of a carbonless copy paper ballot; through use of an optical scan-type ballot; and through use of a telephonic voting system. However, the particular systems discussed herein are given merely as illustrations of particular embodiments of the invention.
Other embodiments of the invention are expected to employ differing degrees of automation in providing, recording and publishing ballots, and validating and tabulating votes, and certifying results.
The systems taught and described herein are not intended to limit the application of the method claimed. The method of the invention must involve instrumentalities and combinations having different physical sizes and characteristics to suit the many corresponding physical limitations, abilities, and requirements that bear on a particular elections. As long as the principles of ensuring that all individual voters may privately verify or correct their individual publicly recorded votes and ensuring that the election system provides the intended equality of each vote cast, the spirit of the instant invention will be fulfilled.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a voting method and system that allows one or more voters to completely verify the accurate tabulation of each vote on an issue.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a voting method and system that allows each voter to verify that his or her individual vote on an issue was correctly cast and counted.
It is a further object of the invention to provide each voter with a private primary post-voting record of the voter""s vote.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a public secondary post-polling record of all votes cast on an issue.
It is a further object of the invention to provide in a voting method and system the capability for voters to use their private primary records of their cast votes to verify or authorize correction of the secondary public record of all votes cast.
It is a further object of the invention to provide in a voting system the capability for voters to use the verified or corrected public record of all votes cast to verify or authorize correction of the tabulated votes.
It is a further object of the invention to provide vote verification and/or vote correction capabilities in a voting method or system that utilizes any physical means of providing, recording and publishing ballots, and validating and tabulating votes, and certifying results.
In addition to the foregoing, further, objects, features, and advantages of the present invention should become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the following detailed description in conjunction with the drawings, wherein there are shown and described illustrated embodiments of the invention.